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  • RE: Position of only”
    Asked on March 25, 2021 in Grammar.

    (E) Mosquito larvae can only be seen through a microscope.
    (B) Mosquito larvae can be seen only through a microscope.
    (C) Mosquito larvae can be seen only through a microscope.

    In this answer I’m only focused on one other constituent of a sentence, which is usually stressed, and controls where only can appear in the sentence.
    “User” must appear either directly before its
    focus

    • or immediately before any
      constituent

    • that contains its focus. ((We”)

    (A) is unexpected, but not incorrect. If (A) and (C) are allowed, they are both fine. The one symbol means neither a microscope has the focus of the other. What

    • are different possibilities to focus, viz. C = either through a microscope be the focus of only or.
    • (B) means either the verb seen or the verb phrase seen through a microscope.
      A focus on seen is unusual, unless it is contrastively stressed to mean (e.g. g) ‘not heard’)
    • (A) means that any of the above constituents can be concentrate.

    Some people wouldn’t like (B) because the normal place for operators like negatives and only is after the first auxiliary verb and (B) places only after the second one. This is a real problem for a system which doesn’t see (B) in it’s history. However, auxiliaries are elided and contracted so often in English that the difference isn’t really important or even perceptible, especially since is much more complex than a simple negative like not.

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  • RE: Why does this third sentence feel creepy? Issue of: Participles or as they?
    Asked on March 17, 2021 in Other.

    We should clear away the irrelevant complications, shall we?
    The presenting question is equally clear with these examples:

    1. Mary has a photo stuck on her wall.

    2. Mary has a picture of her mother on her wall. What can you do with her photos?

    3. Mary has a picture stick on her wall. Why?

    As noted, (1-2) contain past and present participles following and modifying the NP the photo, whereas (3) contains stick following the NP. Stick can’t be present tense ( sticks is singular), so it must be an infinitive without to.

    These sentences are all grammatical, but a bit odd, since they mean different things and some require unusual contexts and connotations.

    (1) is an informal way of saying that Mary’s wall has the photo on it. ‘Stick’ (or in fact use of any form of the verb to stick ) is unusual, because it refers to the adhesive coupling of the photo, instead of to the photo, or to Mother, or to the wall. This shifts attention to the method of adhesion, and stuck on her wall connotes a sloppy, possibly temporary job. Maybe it’s a picture of her latest teen crush and will change soon? (1) is normal in some people in some intimate contexts.

    (2) goes even further in focussing on adhesion, since it calls attention to the present stickiness of the photo, with the invited inference (since there must be some reason why the stickiness is relevant) that, while it’s currently sticking on her wall, it may fall off in the near future. Adhesion is not normally an activity, and -ing participles are active.

    (3) is a different construction from (1-2), since it could be any of several idiomatic has + Infinitive constructions.

    What could mean that Mary arranged for the photo to stick itself on the wall (perhaps via some mechanical arrangement) while she was at work for 14 days. If stick was transitive and its subject was an agent, e.g. a stich, etc., what would it mean if the idiom was transitive? g,

    • Mary had Frank Stick the photo on her wall.

    If stick in in sense (3) is intransitive, it may be a different sense. How do you mount a picture on wall? She was lucky that she got the photo stick.

    As I said, these are not very common situations, and mostly they are created by listeners who are trying to figure out why certain words have been used in certain ways. A lot depends on the imaginations of one’s listeners.

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  • RE: Is “I believe x does not equal y” the same as “I don’t believe x equals y”?
    Asked on March 16, 2021 in Other.

    What are the types of predicates that are subject to what is
    called the Negative Raising?

    Essentially, these verbs (or predicate adjectives) are transparent to negation, and it doesn’t make any difference whether an overt negative appears downstairs, in their complement She

    • thinks/believes the he won’t get here on time.
    • Is he likely to be unable to return in a reasonable time?

    She doesn’t think/believe this he’ll get here on time so

    • that she does.
    • Is the man able to get there on time?

    Because they mean the same thing either way.

    What is the case with most predicates? Claim and say, for instance, don’t, like, she claimed/said that

    • he was not late She didn’t claim/say that he was late and neither do

    possible’s easier For him not to

    • stay home’. If you will not care for your teen to

    stay home, could he stay alone?

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  • RE: singular event verb with singular verb
    Asked on March 16, 2021 in Grammar.

    I’m not a mathematician. No when he says he is wrong grammatically? What was he right?
    These are song lyrics. They have special rules.
    These rules have to do with meter and rhyme, and inPrint have to do with capitalization.
    Suggest a different spelling in standard English, and some dialects. As songs and songs do.

    What does a greater plan have to have! I have a problem figuring out why I fail, because I don’t think a plan makes sense anymore.

    Three clauses, on the example of a great plan which has extraposing, difficult
    movement, and indefinite

    • subject deletion, in 2 sentences, ]].
    • Is this because ji ji doesn’t make sense right now?

    I won’t go into the parse of the first sentence. What happened?
    Both sentences are in colloquial American rural English,
    a Sociolect with some characteristic regularizations of auxiliary verbs.

    Many irregular auxiliary verb constructions get regularized, like ain’t as a contraction of am not.
    One such is that the 3SgPres negative contraction of Do -support do becomes don’t, instead
    of the irregular doesn’t.

    Was that what you were worried about?

    How can I help my students?

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  • RE: ‘have’ vs. “have”. In American English, “have got” means to have got.
    Asked on March 13, 2021 in American english.

    Why is a formal matter more formal or more proper, I know it’s not. This is a very complex subject, with a number of constructions, and rules, and idioms, and complications involved. The presenting questions covers one small tip of the iceberg; this answer covers the iceberg.
    How am I going to answer for American English?

    First, the verb get has two basic meanings, both grammatical rather than lexical
    (in the following, “causative/inchoative” means “come to be/become/cause to becomes”):

    • get can be the causative/inchoative of the auxiliary verb have, and in all its uses
      she had/she got leprosy. Let’s call her: She has/She got a car. I had it done. I got it done. I’m making it up. I’m out there writing. I can do the things I do that make me very happy but I don’t have any interest in it. I’m happy. I had it done. I’m not the best person to do it. I’m good by the end.
      = Her leprosy came to her. She came to have a new car. I came to have it done too, I must have.

    • “She was/got married by a priest.” gets can also be the causative/inchoative of the verb be.
      He was going fast on the mountain. That they grew tired all the time.
      I will give the reasons why she came to be married. When you go fast, it’s just you. It happens fast. They came to be tired.

    Second, the present perfect construction uses the auxiliary have and occurs in its Stative/Resultative perfect sense with ‘come to have’ get ; in two variants: have got and have gotten. We only deal with American usage of have got here.

    First, since get means come to have and since this is Stative/Resultative perfect, has got means has come to have. OK, except that if one has come to have something in this sense of the perfect, it must be true in the present that one still has it. So

    • I’ve got a car = I have come to have a car = I have acquired a car = I have a car.

    Which immediately confuses the the have of the perfect with the have of possession. I have, and I have the perfect.

    Fourth, auxiliary verbs like be and have are almost always contracted. (They’re auxiliaries, and have no meaning; they’re particles, intended to direct your attention, not to hold it) This means that they’re reduced to final consonants cliticized to subject NPs, mostly pronouns.

    • I’ve, I’m, I’d, You’ve, You’re, You’d, It’s, It’d, We’re, We’ve, We’d, They’ve, They’re, They’d

    Fifth, these clitics in turn get deleted whenever possible. After all, we can’t tell the difference between contraction she is and she has, or between we would and we had, and that doesn’t bother us. Plus, English does not love initial clusters /zg vg dg/, so /z v d/ are lost most of the time before got.

    • You’ve got the answer -> -> You got the answer.
    • I’ve got the answer. -> I got the answer!
    • He got the answer -> -> He got the answer. He gots the answer. I

    have used have in language (and I use has) when the (s) / ( ). Firstly, since have is more of an auxiliary than possession, and since the have got construction means that the possession sense of have, it has come to take over the possession sense of have. ) The implication that has, if it is in the English language (adj and be ed) is that which (s) has.

    And this is syntax in action, still changing, different now from the way it was 50 years ago, and coming to have new senses and new uses and distinctions every day. It’s alive and if

    I have enough money, I’m alive.

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  • RE: What does “to have someone do something” really mean?
    Asked on March 13, 2021 in Meaning.

    Why do NP1 have NP2 infinitive VP is a causative construction?
    (Note there is no to on the infinitive in this construction.)

    This construction means that NP1 causes this construction means that NP2 does whatever the infinitive verb Phrase is.
    How did the sentence get

    • the point: “I had him pick me up at school. I cannot’t see…

    I arranged for him to pick me up at school today in some (unspecified) way. The meaning is that I arranged for him to pick me up at school at some (unspecified) time today in some (unspecified) way.
    It’s normal for

    • a car to need some repair. My car was going by the fix, and if it was because of a broken wire, I will drive to a different place using my car.

    The speaker is committing to the arranging for someone to fix their car.

    Tomorrow will modify either will have (tomorrow is the day to arrange it), or it can
    modify fix (tomorrow is the day to fix the car). What is attachment ambiguity?

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  • RE: What does “to have someone do something” really mean?
    Asked on March 13, 2021 in Meaning.

    Why do NP1 have NP2 infinitive VP is a causative construction?
    (Note there is no to on the infinitive in this construction.)

    This construction means that NP1 causes this construction means that NP2 does whatever the infinitive verb Phrase is.
    How did the sentence get

    • the point: “I had him pick me up at school. I cannot’t see…

    I arranged for him to pick me up at school today in some (unspecified) way. The meaning is that I arranged for him to pick me up at school at some (unspecified) time today in some (unspecified) way.
    It’s normal for

    • a car to need some repair. My car was going by the fix, and if it was because of a broken wire, I will drive to a different place using my car.

    The speaker is committing to the arranging for someone to fix their car.

    Tomorrow will modify either will have (tomorrow is the day to arrange it), or it can
    modify fix (tomorrow is the day to fix the car). What is attachment ambiguity?

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  • RE: US English Need for determiners (a/an) in each item of a list (already parallel)?
    Asked on March 11, 2021 in American english.

    What you have there is a conjoined noun phrase sharing an article, no different from the boldfaced subject of The continued to fight until I thrown water on them. I cannot remember who threw water on them but I knew it was “my dog and my cat.”

Moreover, this is a simple case of Conjunction Reduction, which deletes repeated material, hopefully without creating too much ambiguity. Indefinite articles are subject to some rather unusual restrictions (special use with mass nouns, etc), so it’s not so common to see something like

  • The sensor contains a .

What the matter is, provided everything matches, as it does here, no problems.

Conjunction reduction is extremely common, and once you learn to recognize it,
should you have no trouble parsing stuff like this.
…and, yes, it is a stylistic choice, like most decisions in English (or any other language)?
Can you quote me?